Tags
AA, Christian Science, Covid, Covid-19, Eric Garcetti, Garcetti, Health, Healthy Living, Higher Power, Love, Mary Baker Eddy, Mayor of LA, Panic, Religion, Spirituality, Truth, USA
To preface this piece, I am a United States citizen who does not believe in the validity of the U.S. government, nor do I believe that Western medicine is health. Makes a visit home to Los Angeles from Mexico last week a tough one, facing the rules of a government that never got consent to rule over Native Americans here, one that claims free speech and to be a protector of everyone’s right to worship the religion of his or her choice. That is unless there is a virus panic, I guess…
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A while back I called Nancy Pelosi’s Washington D.C. office to ask her people a question. Then I called Bernie Sanders’ folks, also trying the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. My question was: “What is your definition of health?” I thought it a very important and obvious concept to nail down since everybody in the U.S. Government seems so interested in passing laws about it… I got nothing from those offices, came back to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Kamala Harris and Congressman Jimmy Gomez, who represented me locally. Nothing.
The obscurity of “health” and government is playing out more than ever with what I call the virus panic of 2020. Western medicine has been co-opted by our government in a silent deal made I don’t know when. This piece will attempt to address the religious, spiritual and logical consequences of turning our wills and lives over to “medical experts” through our political representatives, who call themselves healthcare champions without defining health.
My definition of health is a peace of mind I get by doing what I feel is God’s will for me, one day at a time. Very “AA” of me, but in my life, I find it all goes better when the spiritual leads the emotional and physical. Spirit, spirit, spirit! It’s powerful stuff, that and faith, and I’ll declare now proudly that if I had one type of healthcare to name it would be Christian Science, a religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy which applied the bible (especially its gospels) to our day to day health. An elderly woman I drove around as a service back in the 1990’s related this religious view of health to me, and I like it. It works for me and it has a great price tag: it’s free.
Let’s put that aside as one person’s view of health in a large country. There are over 300 million people in the U.S. and hence over 300 million views, which I imagine range from totally unlike mine to slightly different. We all have different beliefs on many topics, the U.S. Government through its First Amendment to the Constitution purporting to allow for that, explicitly in the area of religion and in the press. My version of health has a very strong, in fact dominant religious and spiritual component to it. Am I the only one? I sincerely doubt that, as the population of Christian Scientists alone would clearly testify, a number over a couple hundred thousand to be sure.
If health has a religious connection to more than just me, why is Government so adamant that it should be involved with it? Let’s look at that famous Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The U.S. Government needs a clear definition of terms before it can be a valid legislator on health; perhaps one that would cross a religious line, so render it the wrong institution to in fact legislate on the topic.
I visited Los Angeles last week from my home in Mexico to note that its mayor is making citizens wear masks in any public place. This is one of many instances over the years of Government taking sides with Western medicine, calling their “experts” health. A silent arrangement, but an unproven link lingers, as I know I don’t see or feel health in an over-air-conditioned, over-priced doctor’s office. I have the Christian Science, yes, but even the Native American Great Spirit—the natural, earth-based approach to health—fills me with peace of mind more than Western offices, concrete, asphalt, pills and surgeries. It’s okay for someone reading that to be upset and claim a different point of view! Perhaps you get great peace of mind from Western medicine, which is fine, so wear your mask without making me wear one please.
We should all be free to decide our own health path in the United States or anywhere else. This is a hard article to write, as I don’t actually believe in the United States as a valid government, for it was founded in armed theft and violence against the native people here. In fact, at no time has the United States Government received consent of the native peoples to govern here that was not forced at gunpoint—and by John Locke’s definition of government, that it validates itself by the “consent of the governed…” we have a failure. That being said, one has to live by even invalid constructs, and in the case of the U.S. there is a law that’s supposed to give us free speech, and it also claims so proudly to be a democracy.
But during a panic, over a new flu less powerful than the old one, the Government feels it has an excuse to squash free speech, mandate quarantines and masks—lending to the problem in logic I have with such a response. If one is living a healthy life, making positive choices and walking a path with conviction and belief—why would that person change such a path because of an over-hyped virus? The U.S. and other governments aligned with Western medicine ask and demand that we be afraid of people, keep distances. This is against Christian practice, asks that I believe the lie that my brother or sister human being out on the road is more likely to curse me than bless me. I’ll never believe that, nor will I ever believe in a government that doesn’t allow me to believe what I want to believe.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 